Councillor who offered staff paid Christmas shopping leave to prevent ‘skiving’ sacked from cabinet post

A councillor at Leicestershire County Council has been sacked for offering workers a fully paid afternoon off to do their Christmas shopping.

Cabinet member Kevin Feltham said the idea was ‘to prevent staff from skiving off’ to do their festive season shopping. His comments were said to have angered staff.

Leicestershire County Council said it did not allow staff extra time off for Christmas shopping and had no plans to do so.

The council said that its leader David Parsons would write to staff to apologise.

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Parsons said: “I want to make sure that staff realise that we value them very highly and recent comments in the press do not reflect what we think about them.

“With the co-operation of our staff and trade unions, we have reduced absence rates year on year. We want to continue with our positive approach to supporting staff at work in every way we can.”